How to enable Enable Previews in Vista Folders with Preview Pane

If you’re using Microsoft Office 2007, you will notice that it has a nice and handy feature called previews. The previewers which supported by the preview handlers allow users to view or display the contents of documents, emails, messages, attachments, workbooks, videos, audios, presentations and other supported files on screen, without having to open it. For example, in Outlook 2007, users can view the contents of a email message without the need to open it, they can need to select the message in mail folder’s list view and outlook will render the email and display the message in preview pane. The new previews feature also allows users to even view message attachments in the same preview pane, without having to double-click an attachment to open it in the appropriate viewer.

Windows Vista also offers and supports similar preview pane that is accessible from any folder in the shell window. The preview handlers for Windows Vista, Outlook 2007 and Office 2007 are about the same, and the handlers can support Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets, font files, video and audio files, and a variety of other file types that are commonly sent as attachments such as images and photos.

Windows Vista Preview Pane

To enable the preview pane in Windows Vista, simply launch any Explorer window in folder view. At the folder menu, the select Organize, and then click on Layout, and finally select Preview Pane.